PDA

View Full Version : Branching options for my party after failed boat assault



Xervous
2020-05-20, 01:46 PM
My players are barreling head first into a likely catastrophic loss. Rather than baby them and put up more warnings on neon billboards I’d rather have meaningful outcomes available as consequence for their actions while allowing room for choices to drive the plot along.

The campaign in question is mostly exploration driven by player choices and character goals. Sailing through a particular stretch of sea in the course of tracking down a meteor they have once again encountered a giant turtle complete with a sizable forest on its back. The players have long professed a desire to establish a base upon such a turtle. Sighting a massive, advanced multipurpose transportation vessel alongside the turtle with smaller launches ferrying equipment back and forth they grew concerned. Learning that the turtle was being drilled for its bone marrow had the better part of them swear scorched earth and set a course to intercept.

The party of 5 has another eight or so hirelings in tow on their wooden salvager-repurposed-adventuring ship (160ft). Cannons and shot.

The target is functionally a large diesel powered military transport platform kitted for a wide variety of expeditions. I ballparked it at 600-700 ft but I don’t have a firm grasp on what the overall crew count would be. Head count is mostly an irrelevant number as 100 even moderately able combatants is more than the party could handle if they’re rushing in blind.

Some players have indicated they want to do a full on boarding assault and expect to lose hirelings. I intend to continue on with the hirelings being uneasy about assaulting the metal ship but the party all too frequently disregards such warnings. With multiple characters having advanced movement methods (short range teleports, phasing, flight) capturing any of them likely implies beating them unconscious. As the system is something akin to 4e shadowrun the potential for accidental fatal damage exists, but I do have the notion established that the Gexians (Gexia, Gexian, Gexians) are merciless slavers for what little the world knows of them.

Boarding puts the party’s ship in range of cannons, counterboarding, and ramming. Though their ship has a reinforced hull, how much hope does something like a galleon have against a 1940s quality warship in a ramming encounter?

As the Gexians have no use for the party’s ship the logical resolution of a capture would see the ship searched, stripped and scuttled.

Keeping the more mobile characters alive as captives would prove troublesome. In absence of mage cuffs or some other method of dimensional locking being on board the Scholar with her phasing and the Rabid Squirrel Prophet with his no LoS required blink will escape the brig the moment they are conscious and desire to. This Gexian ship isn’t meant to be equipped to detain teleport capable individuals. Sedating the characters benches the players from participating, a clear no go. Creative suggestions are welcome, but I am fine with leaving this as an exit from the scene for the players. Quick jailbreak, overpower one of the smaller boats ferrying turtle marrow and flee with the scholar dropping a fog cloud on the boat to mitigate cannon fire.

There’s also my worry that one or more characters will die in the attack, potentially leaving a gap until the replacement character can be organically introduced.

If kept imprisoned they’d either be taken back to the mainland and sold, or diverted to the keeping of an official whose plans they have unknowingly been mucking up.

What other options do I have/could I spin up to provide avenues for player choice and progress past this event?

If more context is needed I will happily provide it.

el minster
2020-05-20, 08:07 PM
Sabotage the ship. (drill hole in the hull, sneak in and light the explosives battery, destroy the engine...)

RandomLunatic
2020-05-20, 10:09 PM
The target is functionally a large diesel powered military transport platform kitted for a wide variety of expeditions. I ballparked it at 600-700 ft but I don’t have a firm grasp on what the overall crew count would be. Head count is mostly an irrelevant number as 100 even moderately able combatants is more than the party could handle if they’re rushing in blind. This sounds a lot like an auxiliary cruiser (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_merchantman) in configuration if not role. You can look at some of the examples on the page to get an idea of what they look like.

The specifics aren't really important though. Trying to take on a WWII warship, even an auxiliary, in 17th century tall ship is a suicide mission. It's a numbers problem. The sailing ship makes, 10, maybe 11 knots in favorable weather, carries guns firing a 4-6 pound ball about a mile, and needs a minute or two to reload between shots. The auxiliary cruiser can do at least 15 knots in any wind, and fires 100-130 pound shells 10 miles at a rate of 6-8 rounds per minute once the range is dialed in. Unless there's some fancy magical tricks up the PCs' sleeves you haven't mentioned, the cruiser can literally run rings around them and pelt them with shells from beyond range of their own cannons. And there isn't a thing they can do about it. It's so ludicrously lopsided the PCs can claim a tactical victory if they somehow manage to just hit the enemy ship once.

If they insist on attacking, have the Gexians spot the party early and open fire as soon as they enter range, roughly 10 miles away. The opening shots will miss. Widely. Make it clear that this well beyond their own range. The shots will start coming closer as the gunners correct their aim. If the party sees sense and turns tail, then either have the enemy not be interested or if you want to give them a scare and a chase scene make them take so long to recall crew and raise steam that the PCs can open enough of a lead that the pursuers can't close it before night falls and the party can slip away.

If they insist on attacking anyway, total party kill/capture. No other outcome makes sense.

Holding prisoners sounds like a setting thing which I can't really comment on. Hostages are an old standby-separate the teleporters from the muggles and tell them that if they don't stay in their cell, their friends will be shot. Obviously, neither group can be allowed to know where the other is hidden.

LordCdrMilitant
2020-05-20, 10:46 PM
Boarding puts the party’s ship in range of cannons, counterboarding, and ramming. Though their ship has a reinforced hull, how much hope does something like a galleon have against a 1940s quality warship in a ramming encounter?


Almost 0. In fact, even getting close enough to ram is a serious question.

600-700 ft long puts the target on the scale of a Cruiser for 1940's ships.
For example, at the long end, the 670' long Baltimore class heavy cruiser commissioned into service during WWII [1943] carried a complement of 1100 men, armor belt of 6", and nine 8" rifles in three-gun turrets with a large number of secondary guns as well, all with radar ranging and advanced fire control clocks.
At the short end, the 600' long Cleveland class, contemporary the Baltimore, carried 1200 men, a 5" belt, and twelve 6" rifles in three-gun turrets.

That's a lot of men, and a lot of firepower to take a galleon up against. And they have a lot of range: a galleon's cannons and carronades can fire pretty much only in direct fire and up very close, practically knife fight range. By comparison those cruiser's rifles can fire at much higher muzzle velocities and over 20km.
Those ships can clock 33 knots under their own power, much faster than any wind-powered galleon or older steamship could hope to achieve.


If the 1940's ship does not want to be caught, it can just not be caught, and it can stay far away, safely even like 5km away, and just demolish them with accurate shellfire while circling around them. The sailing ship literally has no hope of fighting the steel and steam warship. Your ship doesn't even have to be a fully loaded cruiser, even a couple of guns are more than enough to demolish them.


Their only real chance would be an infiltration mission


As for the encounter, I would play it as follows, largely seconding what a previous poster said:
If they attack with their ship and by day:
At around 20km, they're spotted visually. The enemy ship opens fire on them with a warning salvo from one turret that's wide and long. Several shells arc through the air and splash into the water behind them, throwing up great plumes of water. The enemy ship is just a speck on the horizon, but they can see the flashes. This is about 19km further than they can hope to engage.
Rounds come in intermittedly while they close to 15km. None connect, but a few come dangerously close spraying water across the ship from their geysers. the enemy is finding the range, and shells start coming more often.
Soon after, if they don't start to turn away around 12km, the enemy ship finds the range and the first shell hits their ship. It punches through the upper hull and splinters wood as if it isn't there, and then explodes, shredding crew where it bursts, demolishing the area where it hit. The ship has a jagged hole above the waterline, wounded, maybe a fire, and some of it's guns are unseated and destroyed.
The party should not have their hands full trying to solve the immediate problem, when the second connecting round hits [and several more bracket the ship], definitely killing crew, smashing parts of the gun decks, and opening a massive rent above the waterline.
If the party turns away, the enemy will fire several more salvoes that miss, before stopping firing.
If the party continues to damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead, one of their mates tells them that they are literally at 10 times the distance of the maximum range of their guns. Some one else tells them they can't take another hit like that. If they forge ahead, a third round splinters a mast toppling it over, smashing pieces of the ship as they scramble out of the way.
Finally, if they still haven't turned back after a little bit, a fourth round passes through their shattered hull and detonates beneath their keel, blasting it apart. They are now definitely sinking and can bail out in lifeboats and on planks, and wash ashore on the turtle in the night, where they can plan from there.


If they go for a night approach on their ship, around 10km have several bright flashes light up from where the enemy ship is, followed by several very close splashes off their bow that rain splinters and seawater over their ship. If they don't turn back, have the range be found faster, and around 5km the enemy scores their first hit, and then hits quicker and more often after that until they turn away or are sunk, and wash ashore on the turtle.

Xervous
2020-05-21, 07:00 AM
With the party having approached from the east, turtle’s heading being northerly, Gexian cruiser being situated on the western side of the turtle, they were able to close to within a few miles before either ship sighted the other. Warning shots may prove sufficient and there is the turtle harvesting to explain why the cruiser may not opt to pursue.

Party arrangement
Naga Scholar: lightning based blasting, some utility functions like a levitate spell, photographic memory doesn’t really play into this scene. Capable of phasing through most solid obstructions and has a short range LoS dependent teleport. Water walking, high swimming and water breathing.
Rabid Squirrel Prophet: melee bruiser with speak-to-animals and flexible teleportation including options that don’t need LoS but incur severe damage if the target location is obstructed. High swimming and water breathing.
Rockstar Bard: radiant blasting, some status purging options and a limited use short range deny death effect, acid based retaliation damage, Glamour (RP effect that makes the user super memorable in exchange for heightened social interaction prowess). Darkvision
Secret Agent: stealth/recon/assassination focus, limited proximity invisibility, flight. Darkvision
Muscle Mage: butterknifing sunder, fire blasting, grapple and throwing potency (conceivably toss a Clydesdale with modest effort), exceptionally strong and durable to the point he might soak a cannon shell to the chest depending on how the cannon is statted up

Sinking -> stranded on turtle island does sound like an appealing alternative if they don’t wise up fast.

LordCdrMilitant
2020-05-21, 02:52 PM
Sinking -> stranded on turtle island does sound like an appealing alternative if they don’t wise up fast.

And it gives them a path forward if they want to, since they can try an infiltration approach to try to sabotage or drive away the cruiser.


And "a few miles" is the range at which the cruiser's guns are pretty dang accurate and still a few miles outside their own range.

RandomLunatic
2020-05-21, 04:53 PM
Yeah, that's a pretty bad place for the PCs. Re-reading the OP, I missed the part where the ship was diesel powered. There's no "building up steam", getting underway is only slightly more involved than starting a truck. Even a skeleton crew will be able to cast off and get into action right away. As said, a few miles is still out of range for the PCs but point-blank for the cruiser. They're still too far away to attack, and now way too close to run. The ship is toast, and the crew's only hope of survival is to make land(turtle?)fall and disappear into the trees. And then they'll need a cleverer plan than "attack something 20 times your own tonnage in broad daylight".

The only variable at this point is just how many new orifices get torn in the PCs. The best balance between "verisimilitude" and "not outright killing the party" is that within ten minutes the PC's ship is crippled, burning, and sinking, forcing them to either turn towards shore or break out the life jackets. Seeing the "threat" neutralized, the enemy captain stops shooting to save ammo, and instead follows them a couple miles outside of (the party's) gun range while prepping launches to carry shore parties to hunt them down when they land.

el minster
2020-05-21, 05:47 PM
seriously, sabotage seems like your only option unless you can blast the ship with lightning and kill/electrocute everyone onboard, because its a steel ship.

LordCdrMilitant
2020-05-21, 08:52 PM
seriously, sabotage seems like your only option unless you can blast the ship with lightning and kill/electrocute everyone onboard, because its a steel ship.

Real life steel warships get hit by lightning all the time. It won't electrocute the crew. It can damage the ship, but it's not like catastrophic.

el minster
2020-05-21, 11:35 PM
Real life steel warships get hit by lightning all the time. It won't electrocute the crew. It can damage the ship, but it's not like catastrophic.

shoot a lightning bolt straight through the wall then.

Kaptin Keen
2020-05-22, 12:20 AM
Maybe simply explain to the players, what their characters would know: This isn't something they can win.

Morgaln
2020-05-22, 10:23 AM
shoot a lightning bolt straight through the wall then.

You can't shoot lightning through a metal wall. The electricity will follow the way of least resistance, which is along the wall, not through it. Since the ship is a farady's cage, your lightning will just run around the hull and dissipate.

el minster
2020-05-22, 01:38 PM
You can't shoot lightning through a metal wall. The electricity will follow the way of least resistance, which is along the wall, not through it. Since the ship is a farady's cage, your lightning will just run around the hull and dissipate.

Lightning doesn't strike in a straight line either. It's magic lightning.

LordCdrMilitant
2020-05-22, 05:08 PM
Lightning doesn't strike in a straight line either. It's magic lightning.

There's a crew of hundreds. Chain lighting hits at most like 4 targets in 5e, and not that many more in 3.5e/PF.

Even if we assume the magic lightning robotechs around walls and through bulkheads, it's not any more effective than a fireball or cone of cold, which is the point.

In fact, if fireball starts fires and expands to fill its volume, fireball will probably be more effective. Lightning may not be a particularly serious threat to a steel warship, but fire on board absolutely is, especially in 1940's. Fire protection had improved since the days to coal fired ships burning to the waterline from Shimosa at Tsushima, but a fire can not only set off munitions and light fuel ablaze, it can sever communications and firefighting mains, block access to parts of the ship, and suck the oxygen out of otherwise sealed lower compartments. You do not want a shipboard fire.

el minster
2020-05-22, 08:59 PM
I was talking about Lighting Bolt. And since you have a large concentration of enemies you could kill a bunch. Alternatively you could find the ships magazine and target it to blow it up.

Kaptin Keen
2020-05-23, 02:53 AM
I was talking about Lighting Bolt. And since you have a large concentration of enemies you could kill a bunch. Alternatively you could find the ships magazine and target it to blow it up.

No version of lightning bolt penetrates walls. Back in 2e you could bounce it off non-conductive barriers for extra damage. If it did enough damage to destroy the barrier, it would continue on - but, well, if I was the GM, lightning would make zero impact on an armored warship.

Xervous
2020-05-23, 10:39 AM
One of the big things I should have highlighted earlier is that the cruiser does not view them as hostile initially. The immediate region is a 'here there be dragons' frontier where anything goes, but it's foolish to waste shot on such an insignificant ship that as of yet has not demonstrated any hostile tendencies. On the other hand the frontier nature at the very least implies anyone who ventures here is probably equipped for survival and able to fend off supernatural threats. A warning shot should set the tone, and some superficial damage from the second shot should drive the point home.

Glancing through a spyglass the party could only observe large reinforced windows on the command deck structure (is the term island reserved for aircraft carriers? Seems to be as that's a separate structure while most dedicated command structures are more centralized and integrated from what I have seen in my limited experience.) They are hoping to break in and kill the pilot + captain but that just leads to chain of command and the backup command compartment coming into play.

Small details making a big difference I hadn't thought through what it meant for acceleration and ramp up time for the ship to be running on diesel or coal powered steam. Grabbing some numbers off quick searches I'm seeing diesel having 40% more energy by volume vs. coal but this isn't taking into account the relative efficiency of coal or diesel fueled steam. As there is nothing in the plot that hinges off the usage of coal or diesel I am not seeing any harm in declaring the ship is coal powered (and it probably fits better for the overall atmosphere and themes I am shooting for), there isn't as much of a loss in energy storage capacity as I expected making long treks such as this venture still comfortably within the cruiser's capabilities.

This brings me around to the ship itself. A ballpark of 1000 crew gives me a fine idea of what manner of resistance they would encounter, but I don't have deck plans fully drawn up yet! At 600 ft, what would the ship's beam likely be? Eight decks too few, too many?

LordCdrMilitant
2020-05-23, 03:00 PM
One of the big things I should have highlighted earlier is that the cruiser does not view them as hostile initially. The immediate region is a 'here there be dragons' frontier where anything goes, but it's foolish to waste shot on such an insignificant ship that as of yet has not demonstrated any hostile tendencies. On the other hand the frontier nature at the very least implies anyone who ventures here is probably equipped for survival and able to fend off supernatural threats. A warning shot should set the tone, and some superficial damage from the second shot should drive the point home.

Glancing through a spyglass the party could only observe large reinforced windows on the command deck structure (is the term island reserved for aircraft carriers? Seems to be as that's a separate structure while most dedicated command structures are more centralized and integrated from what I have seen in my limited experience.) They are hoping to break in and kill the pilot + captain but that just leads to chain of command and the backup command compartment coming into play.

Small details making a big difference I hadn't thought through what it meant for acceleration and ramp up time for the ship to be running on diesel or coal powered steam. Grabbing some numbers off quick searches I'm seeing diesel having 40% more energy by volume vs. coal but this isn't taking into account the relative efficiency of coal or diesel fueled steam. As there is nothing in the plot that hinges off the usage of coal or diesel I am not seeing any harm in declaring the ship is coal powered (and it probably fits better for the overall atmosphere and themes I am shooting for), there isn't as much of a loss in energy storage capacity as I expected making long treks such as this venture still comfortably within the cruiser's capabilities.

This brings me around to the ship itself. A ballpark of 1000 crew gives me a fine idea of what manner of resistance they would encounter, but I don't have deck plans fully drawn up yet! At 600 ft, what would the ship's beam likely be? Eight decks too few, too many?

Oh boy! You've found one of Katherine's Favorite Things To Prattle On For Hours About!



Island refers to the bridge of aircraft carriers, yes, because it sticks up like an island from the flight deck. Otherwise, it's the Bridge or the Conning Tower. The "pilot" is the Helmsman. Specifically, the bridge is the place where the ship is commanded from and the helmsman is. It often has an armored conning tower in it in heavier warships that sticks up from the citadel into the bridge to protect the vital officers, but some navies didn't include this because they found that A: captains like being outside the metal box where they could see what's going on and B: if a shell penetrated it and exploded, it would kill everyone in the conning tower and it wasn't that shellproof, versus not arming when it passed through the unarmored bridge and only killing a few of them.


Warships of the 20th century mostly run on heavy oil Bunker C. Warship engine technology is very complicated:
All non-sail heavy warships are propelled by steam. Internal Combustion Engines like your car aren't powerful enough [Early submarines and small boats use them, though] compared to steam power. There are two major parts: the boiler, where the fuel is burned to turn water into super-pressurized steam [and this isn't tea-kettle steam, this steam is extraordinarily hot and under very high pressure], and the part where the energy is taken out of the steam to turn the prop shaft. A warship needs to build up steam pressure to get underway, but even stationary it can still use it's guns.

For the boiler, at the beginning of the 20th Century [pre-dreadnoughts], ships were primarily fired by coal. Stoker shove coal into the firebox, and it burns to heat the water running in tubes above.
Then they transitioned to oil fired. Heavy Oil is far more powerful than coal and burns hotter, because it is sprayed into the boiler as a fine mist rather than shoveled in as a brick, allowing for a more even flame temperature and more burning surface area per unit fuel in the boiler. Oil fired ships are still used today for most ships.
After WWII, nuclear power was invented, and is way better than oil or coal, not the least because it doesn't need refueling often and doesn't breathe air. It is, however, very big and very heavy, so it's only good for really big ships and submarines.

For the other end of the power plant:
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Expansion Engine, particularly the Triple Expansion Engine was the primary method of turning superheated steam into rotational energy. You know how a steam locomotive works with pistons? It works exactly like that, but three times over to try to squeeze all the energy out of the steam. Steam is let into the cylinder, and pushes it down as it expands, and then is vented into the next cylinder chamber as the cylinder is driven back up.
The HMS Dreadnought, introduced in 1912, was revolutionary because it introduced the High Pressure Steam Turbine. Rather than having cylinders that go up and down, the Steam Turbine works by having rotating "fan blades" that are spun as the hot steam flows over them. It's actually the same thing that's in a jet engine. These are very efficient, and the more pressure you can get the better they are.

Your 1940 era ship would probably be fuelled by heavy oil bunker C [stored in fuel tanks all around the ship, often in the hull sides as a little extra ablative protection] with a high pressure steam turbine. Note that the "fuel everywhere" isn't actually a serious fire danger to the ship, because fuel oil needs air to burn and there's no air in the fuel tanks. The real risk is that something like the Bismarck can happen, where a penetration causes you to lose your fuel to the ocean.



Armoring of such a ship would be something called "all or nothing". The shellproof heavy armor is concentrated over the machine spaces and the magazines, often with an armored conning tower to protect the crew, with the rest of the ship only thick enough to be bulletproof. Some battleships had a decapping layer outside their main belt to break the penetrating cap and arm the fuse so it would explode outside the armored belt. Armor that isn't thick enough to stop incoming shells but is thicker than bulletproof is actually a hinderance to your ship, because naval AP shells fuse when they hit armor and explode soon after inside the ship, and a thin layer of armor will initiate the fuze but not prevent it from penetrating. It also makes you heavier and slower to have armor where you don't need it. Armor is heavy, and ships operated on a principle of "zones of immunity". At greater than some range, the armor would be proof against a specific caliber of shell, usually the same caliber that the ship's own guns were using. At less than that range, it could be penetrated. The goal was to have as wide a zone of immunity as possible [out to the range that the enemy would have a hard time hitting you], while still being able to make acceptable speed with acceptable seaworthiness. Ships were basically never armored to resist more powerful guns than their own; if you were going to go through the effort of armoring your ship that much, you might as well arm it to match.
Because the naval engagement range is so long, including over-the-horizon for battleship caliber guns, at some point the shells stop coming it horizontally and start coming down from above because of their ballistic trajectories. This is called "plunging fire" and is super dangerous, if it can hit. Deck armor is usually pretty weak, though it went up drastically for WWII era because of aerial bombs and better long-range rangefinding for guns. There are usually two armor decks: a bomb deck and a armored deck. The bomb deck is to arm the fuses of the armor piercing bombs, so that they explode against the armor deck and don't damage the machine spaces.



Ships of the 1940's usually had Primary, Secondary, and AA batteries of guns. The Primary guns would be, for a cruiser, either 6" or 8" guns [6" for light cruiser, 8" for heavy cruiser]. The secondary batteries are, at least on US ships, often 5" DP guns, though other navies had different calibers. These guns are both heavy AA guns and light antiship guns, and also present a serious threat to the party. Late '40's they have VT proximity fuses available for better AA performance, and use against people so they burst in shrapnel clouds at head height [Yikes! This is a gun 5" in diameter airbursting in a cloud of metal splinters!]. Finally, there's the AA battery, which in this period would basically be guns ranging from the 40mm Quad/Twin Borfors Gun to the .50 cal liberally festooned across the ship basically anywhere they would fit. All of these fire fast and many have multiple barrels, like the Quad Borfors [which has 4 barrels] or the Octuple Pom-Pom [with an astounding 8 barrels]. Larger caliber guns also fire exploding shells. Even if the ship isn't under steam, the guns can still be manned and once the party is close a vertiable deluge of firepower will be directed their way, most of it just unsurvivable to a crew of a wooden ship.



As for deck plans, here's that of the Cleveland Cruiser, which is about the size and era you're looking for.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/6f/47/93/6f4793a03e936406d30a4d3b8ccb189d.jpg

Xervous
2020-05-23, 04:21 PM
a veritable treasury of knowledge

Thank you for clearing up a great many things! Oil sounds much more fitting and all the details about armoring and construction build nicely upon the tidbits I've picked up over the years. The picture is greatly informative but it's also helped me realize my mental image of a cruiser didn't quite mesh with the proper usage of the word. Though it took me some searching (learning about military sealift command was the largest hurdle, checking wrong sections and whatnot) I finally found the the classification for the big ship I was loosely basing it off. Large, Medium-Speed Roll-on/Roll-off (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large,_Medium-Speed_Roll-on/Roll-off). A design from the tail end of the century is a far cry from the 1940s. I understand there are limits to which a ship can be outfitted for a multitude of roles in terms of practicality so I understand if my vision of this ship's functionality is a little too broad, a stretch of verisimilitude my players likely won't question.

It is primarily a long distance transport ship with modest cranes and roll-on/roll-off capability.
It is sufficiently weaponized to deter large threats (kraken, middling size dragons) and the less advanced wooden ships it encounters, but is expressly not a combat ship as its primary function.
It may have a reinforced hull for icebreaking if it's reasonable, as common routes for the Gexian navy can trace through arctic seas.

I'm definitely stuffing all that information away for the next time they encounter a cruiser.

LordCdrMilitant
2020-05-23, 06:36 PM
Thank you for clearing up a great many things! Oil sounds much more fitting and all the details about armoring and construction build nicely upon the tidbits I've picked up over the years. The picture is greatly informative but it's also helped me realize my mental image of a cruiser didn't quite mesh with the proper usage of the word. Though it took me some searching (learning about military sealift command was the largest hurdle, checking wrong sections and whatnot) I finally found the the classification for the big ship I was loosely basing it off. Large, Medium-Speed Roll-on/Roll-off (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large,_Medium-Speed_Roll-on/Roll-off). A design from the tail end of the century is a far cry from the 1940s. I understand there are limits to which a ship can be outfitted for a multitude of roles in terms of practicality so I understand if my vision of this ship's functionality is a little too broad, a stretch of verisimilitude my players likely won't question.

It is primarily a long distance transport ship with modest cranes and roll-on/roll-off capability.
It is sufficiently weaponized to deter large threats (kraken, middling size dragons) and the less advanced wooden ships it encounters, but is expressly not a combat ship as its primary function.
It may have a reinforced hull for icebreaking if it's reasonable, as common routes for the Gexian navy can trace through arctic seas.

I'm definitely stuffing all that information away for the next time they encounter a cruiser.

I'm glad someone appreciates my random pile of useless knowledge about warfighting in the 20th century. ;)



An armed transport would carry a small number, maybe 1-3, deck guns and a small-moderate number of AA guns [both of which would absolutely make short work of a dragon or kraken. I'm 99% certain a D&D5e or PF dragon would not want to mess with explosives the size of your fist coming in at almost a thousand m/s at 120 rounds/minute]. The 5" guns aren't as immediate a death sentence for a large wooden ship just because they can't blow that much up at once like a bigger gun, but a few salvoes will still be turning them into a flaming hulk, wood won't stop them so they could explode in the magazines, and even a few 20mm autocannons will make anyone regret coming close.

It wouldn't have the advanced ranging and fire control capability of an full warship, probably limited to point-and-shoot, but with much higher velocity than a cannon or carronade even the 20mm guns will be effective and aimable beyond the reasonable threat range of the party's warship.

RandomLunatic
2020-05-23, 08:10 PM
Oh boy! You've found one of Katherine's Favorite Things To Prattle On For Hours About!Me too!


Warships of the 20th century mostly run on heavy oil Bunker C. Warship engine technology is very complicated:
All non-sail heavy warships are propelled by steam. *Cough* Deutchsland.


Armoring of such a ship would be something called "all or nothing".All-or-nothing was first put into practice by the USN's "Standard" battleships, and it didn't make its way back to the Old World until after WWI when the British used it to save weight on the Nelson class. Most navies didn't use it, instead using varying thickness across the ship, with the heaviest concentrations being over the engine space, magazines, main battery gunhouses, and the conning tower.


Thank you for clearing up a great many things! Oil sounds much more fitting and all the details about armoring and construction build nicely upon the tidbits I've picked up over the years. The picture is greatly informative but it's also helped me realize my mental image of a cruiser didn't quite mesh with the proper usage of the word. Though it took me some searching (learning about military sealift command was the largest hurdle, checking wrong sections and whatnot) I finally found the the classification for the big ship I was loosely basing it off. Large, Medium-Speed Roll-on/Roll-off (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large,_Medium-Speed_Roll-on/Roll-off). A design from the tail end of the century is a far cry from the 1940s. I understand there are limits to which a ship can be outfitted for a multitude of roles in terms of practicality so I understand if my vision of this ship's functionality is a little too broad, a stretch of verisimilitude my players likely won't question.

It is primarily a long distance transport ship with modest cranes and roll-on/roll-off capability.
It is sufficiently weaponized to deter large threats (kraken, middling size dragons) and the less advanced wooden ships it encounters, but is expressly not a combat ship as its primary function.
It may have a reinforced hull for icebreaking if it's reasonable, as common routes for the Gexian navy can trace through arctic seas.
I did mention auxiliary cruisers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_auxiliary_cruiser_Kormoran) in my first post, which is the closest RL analog to what you're describing.

I couldn't find any proper deck plans that were readable, but I did find this cutaway drawing of the German commerce raider Kormoran (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_auxiliary_cruiser_Kormoran). She was diesel powered, and had cranes for cargo handling. As your ships is not a commerce raider, I find unlikely they'd bother with concealed weapons. Honestly, if most people in the setting are tooling around in sailing ships, a DP gun of 4.7"-5.1" on the fore and poop decks, 2-4 3"-4" DP guns along the broadsides, and 12-20 light AA and autocannon mounts will be more than enough to annihilate even a Napoleonic 1st-rate ship of the line, let alone a crummy 13-man sloop. If other people in your setting have comparable tech, then you may consider upping the main guns to the 5.9"-6" range.
https://docplayer.net/docs-images/67/57615552/images/20-0.jpg
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QwOY1t8W7yY/Tq03F0EV0lI/AAAAAAAACcg/w8kkxRPDjiE/s1600/HSK+Komoran+1.png


I'm definitely stuffing all that information away for the next time they encounter a cruiser.
Just for funsies, IMO the 3 worst cruisers you could stick them with are:

3: Atlanta (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta-class_cruiser) CLAA or subclass. 12-14 5" guns on the broadside make up in quantity what individual rounds lack in destructive quality. The 5"/C38 was regularly clocked at 20 rounds per gun per minute in action-all the timbers will be shivered. Between shell splinters and wood splinters, the effect on the main deck will be an open-air cuisinart.

2: Worcester (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester-class_cruiser) CL. The bigger, badder follow-on to the Atlanta uses auto loading 6" guns. The fire rate drops to 12 rounds per minute, double anything else in the 6" category, and the weight of the shell nearly doubles over the 55 pound 5" shells.

1: Des Moines (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Des_Moines-class_cruiser) CA. These nasties start with a secondary broadside of 8 of 5" guns, so the secondary armament is 2/3rds of the Atlanta mentioned above. The main armament is 9 rapid fire 8" guns, putting out 8 250-pound shells per minute! Only a nuke would wipe them out faster.

LordCdrMilitant
2020-05-24, 12:23 AM
Me too!

*Cough* Deutchsland.

Okay, yeah, there were the pocket battleships [and a few others. I know we had some diesel Destroyer Escorts too because diesel engines were cheaper and easier to make], but the vast majority of heavy fighting ships were steam powered because steam power plants were more efficient.


All-or-nothing was first put into practice by the USN's "Standard" battleships, and it didn't make its way back to the Old World until after WWI when the British used it to save weight on the Nelson class. Most navies didn't use it, instead using varying thickness across the ship, with the heaviest concentrations being over the engine space, magazines, main battery gunhouses, and the conning tower.


I'm aware that All or Nothing was by no means universal through time, but in the 1940's it's a safe assumption that it's an All or Nothing scheme, since IIRC only the Germans were building other armor layouts in any significant measure.

It's also like not relevant for ships that aren't like capital units.